We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 57: Marathon

Book 5: Chapter 57: Marathon

Howard

September 2344

Jabberwocky

Raft creation wasn’t much of an issue. We had lots of trees, and they’d evolved to be light—something like balsa wood. Lashing a dozen posts together took next to no time, and the rafts could be carried comfortably at the end of a set of slings by about sixteen dragons. Coordinating everyone to prevent midair collisions was a real fear, so it helped that only trained and disciplined military would be tasked with this part of the plan.

Within hours, the first raft was on its way, with more coming ready every couple of hours. Soon we had twenty rafts en route. The next phase was supplies. Clay pots for the signal fires, kindling to burn, food, and tuev all went out in slings held by pairs of dragons.

It was a military operation that any Earth general would have been proud of. And while this had been going on, the rest of Alexander’s army had been organizing the dragon exodus. Most of the required numbers had been filled by volunteers, since the specter of starvation was very real and very immediate. A human would have trouble understanding the dragon psychology in this regard. A human could, in extreme circumstances, survive for weeks on little or no food—not so dragons with their amped-up metabolisms. A few days without sustenance, and most of them would eat their own mothers.

A dragon wearing the arm patch of the military flew in from the west and landed heavily. He sat down, panted for a few moments, then said, “All set. Rafts are ready; fires are lit.”

Alexander turned to his generals. “Let’s get this going.”

*****

The exodus would take about a half day. Groups were to be sent out, each about half the size of the raft’s capacity, staggered so that they had some flexibility in scheduling. It was inevitable that some would arrive too tired to continue according to plan, and they could be given an extra round of rest.

I went ahead of the first exodus group with a few soldiers, ostensibly to look over the raft and make sure everything was okay. In reality, I’d be reporting back to Bridget. Alexander remained suspicious that we were communicating in some secret way. In any case, he didn’t put up any kind of argument about me going.

We arrived at the raft in a few hours. The flight had been uneventful, if perhaps a little tiring for the others. Dranny metabolism, of course, could go almost forever, but I was careful to appear as winded as the rest.

The fires were going in their clay pots, a number of casks of tuev were lined up, and everything looked shipshape. We rested for a while, knocked back a couple of pints of paint thinner, and then, on a command from our group leader, launched into the air, bound for Lemuria.

It was another routine flight. There were no thermals to speak of, but the air movements over the ocean provided occasional updrafts to make a dragon comfortable. I had to admit, this was possibly the best humanoid form we’d come across, and there had to be a way to turn this into—

I felt something land heavily on my back, and a spear suddenly protruded from my chest. All the dranny telltales went red, and the sensory overload limiter flipped on. I just had time to think what the fffff—before my dranny connection was severed.

I immediately messaged Bridget. “I think I’ve just been assassinated. Dranny is offline. Watch for attack.”

“What? How?” Bridget cut off her questions. “Talk later. Contact Mario now.”

It took less than a millisecond to update Mario, and a camouflaged drone was on its way to pick up the dranny corpse. I hoped the drone would get there before some large oceanic predator that didn’t know any better decided to have it for a snack.

I sat in my VR, fuming. The only reason I could think of for this attack was Alexander trying to get rid of the competition. Wow, had he ever misread the room. Bridget would tear him a new one if he gave her any reason to suspect him.

Well, whatever. I was dead. Might as well get some work done. I pulled up my email queue and started going through the backlog.

*****

Mario called me a short while later. “Hey, Howard. We got the dranny. Nice flesh wound. Right through where the heart should be.” He sent me an image at the same time. Yep. Definitely a kill shot.

“Can you fix it?” I asked.

“Of course. Already half-done. We’ve thrown all our roamers at it. And once we activated the internal roamers, they got a lot of it cleaned up. Hey, do you want me to leave a scar?”

“What? No, of course—” Then I hesitated. Chances were it wouldn’t ever come up, but I could always fix it later. “On the other hand, yeah. Old war wound kinda thing. Make it fresh and livid.”

Mario laughed and signed off.

I messaged Bridget. “Anything interesting happening at your end?”

“No, Howard. Everything seems quite routine. Although Alexander does seem to be paying me more attention than usual.”

Uh-huh. That fit. I sent the picture to Bridget with the caption Your new boyfriend plays rough.

She answered right away. “You’re going to show up, right? I want to see his face, just before I rip it off.”

I sent her a heart emoji and signed off. Alexander was dead meat.